Canada not doing enough for world health, says Stephen Lewis

Canada is not doing enough to fight global disease, Stephen Lewis says in the wake of the World Health Organizations new guidelines on HIV treatment and prevention.

“It’s heartbreaking. You know what Canada could do. You know the difference we could make,” he said.

The former UN Special Envoy for HIV-AIDS in Africa, and co-founder and co-director of AIDS-Free World, says Canada’s withdrawal on the world stage in providing foreign aid is a catastrophe.

The World Health Organization released new guidelines on HIV treatment and prevention on Wednesday. The guidelines called for everyone who is infected with the disease to be put on antiretroviral triple-therapy drugs. For those who are at substantial risk of becoming infected, they should be offered the protective doses of these drugs.

The new guidelines bring in millions of new patients deemed eligible for the drugs — from 28 million to 37 million people living with the disease. The organizations guidelines hope to eradicate the disease by 2030.

Lewis says Canada’s role in helping fight HIV internationally is “quite obvious.” He says the government could make a significant financial contribution to the financial shortfall that developing countries – Africa in particular – will feel because of the demands to get treatment.

The WHO estimates by 2020, low-and lower-middle income countries will need $18.4 billion annually, to help fight the HIV battle.

However, the government has put a cap on foreign aid, which puts the country in a difficult place to make a contribution during a time, Lewis calls a “critically important moment. It can make a huge difference in lives that can be saved.”

In the 2015 federal budget, the Conservative government extended the five-year freeze on foreign aid which was originally imposed to bring down the deficit.

Canada’s foreign aid spending has declined to 0.24 per cent of our gross domestic product — down from 0.27 per cent the year before. It’s an even steep decline from the 1980s, which saw governments providing 0.5 per cent of the country’s GDP towards foreign aid, says Lewis. Canada is nearly at the bottom of Western countries who provide aid. “We’ve never been this low.”

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the OECD average on foreign aid spending in 2014 was 0.29 per cent — far below the United Nations call for 0.7 per cent.

Lewis says he hopes Canadian party leaders and the government will take the WHO announcement seriously, and provide funds to the Global Fund — to fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis — or to the countries directly.

Canada has diminished its capacity to end poverty and help fund global health initiatives. If a government wants to make a difference, they need to restore foreign aid to the levels it existed prior to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government. Then, gradually increase it to 0.7 per cent of the GDP.

This retreat from providing support to countries has not gone unnoticed, says Lewis.“When I’m at the UN talking to ambassadors or civil servants, they say, “what has happened to Canada?”

People might take issue with what Lewis is saying, and he is aware of that, but at seats of power of multilateral institutions, Canada’s reputation has significantly declined.

“If you speak to governments in Africa, they are bewildered by our behaviour. They always thought Canada cared about the developing world. Canada seems to have withdrawn from that historical commitment.”

He applauds the Conservative governments commitment to maternal health and children — but says it’s only a beginning. The cut back on foreign aid has hampered our ability to help on a continent like Africa where help is so desperately needed.

“We have a moral obligation to the rest of the world, as a wealthy and privileged country, and we are not fulfilling it.”

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